


Fill Me Full Of Love

by loveofmylonglife



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 00:12:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8423206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveofmylonglife/pseuds/loveofmylonglife
Summary: Elizabeth's disjointed thoughts after Ross leaves Trenwith. Set at the end of 2x08.





	

“When will you—“

“Soon.”

With that, he grabbed his jacket, balling it up in his hands, his eyes still ghosting over Elizabeth as he backed out of the bedroom and closed the door. She stared at the closed door for a moment, looking but not quite seeing as she heard Ross’ boots thunder down the stairs. At once, she was a flurry of movement, pulling the sheets off her and grabbing her pale green gown from the floor. She slipped it on quickly, holding it around her as she hurried to the door, her hair falling across her face. She attempted to make her way to the window across the landing, intending to watch Ross riding away until she heard a sound from downstairs. She paused, freezing in her tracks as she turned towards the balcony that looked down over the receiving room. Who could possibly be downstairs at this time in the morning? Aunt Agatha never got up this early and she knew Geoffrey Charles was still fast asleep. Was it one of the servants? What if they saw Ross riding away so early? Her heart thudded in her chest and she began to prickle uncomfortably as she stepped cautiously towards the balcony. She placed one hand on it gingerly as she risked a look down below to see no one other than Ross, his coat tossed on the table in front of him as she leaned over it tiredly, his head bowed. She could hear him attempting to regulate his breathing from where she was on the balcony and wondered for a moment whether she should go down to see him, but thought the better of it. He had already been quick to cut her off as he’d left her bedroom, something told her he didn’t want to talk to her this morning. He had told her he wanted to leave before the household woke. He’d avoided saying Demelza’s name.

Elizabeth watched quietly as Ross lifted one hand, running it through his hair slowly. He sighed and picked up his bundled up jacket, unfurling it and pulling it on carelessly before turning on his heel and striding out. The thud of his boots echoed hauntingly around the wooden room and Elizabeth turned, quickly making her way to the window, pressing her hand against it as she watched him walk out. The crunch of the gravel was audible even from this height and Ross swung up on his horse, pulling the reins taught and riding off instantly. She watched him leave as a painful mass rose in her throat. He made his way to the gate and paused, turning the reins to stall his horse as he looked back at Trenwith. She almost gasped involuntarily at his action, but stopped herself, pressing her hand harder against the window. Ross looked at the estate for a moment and turned his horse back towards the gate, charging out commandingly. She wondered for a few moments whether she’d ever see him come back through those gates, and whether he had noticed that she was standing at the window. It seemed he’d seen the house, but not her.

She felt similarly invisible as she unstuck her hand from the window. Ross was long gone now, there was nothing to see. A chill swept up her bare forearms and into the wide sleeves of her robe as she suddenly realised how cold it was. Dawn was always the coldest time of the day in Trenwith. A time she’d usually spend snuggled up in bed under the covers. She stared out of the window again, this time up at the sky. It was grey and dark, no sun was making its way across the horizon and she remembered for a moment how much she used to love winter. It had always been a special time, she’d adored the festive season as a girl. The chill, the infrequent snow, the crunch of morning frost under her feet, the simple bareness and starkness of the landscape. But most of all, the joy of the season and the smiles on people’s faces that warmed every inch of Trenwith, the festivities all across Cornwall. The parties and balls didn’t interest her, it was always the small family dinners she enjoyed as a teenager. Not her own family dinners, but the Poldarks, where she’d find a quiet moment and escape into the rose garden with Ross. And after she got married, she would traverse that very garden with her beautiful baby son, swaddling him in three blankets to ward off the cold until he got old enough to walk, by which time she would lean down to hold his little hand as he toddled over the grass and gravel, pointing at frost sparkling like diamonds on each little blade of grass.

The dawn didn’t entice her the same way this morning. The cold didn’t excite her. The entire house was quiet and her footsteps made small shuffling sounds on the ground, her gown dragging on the floor as she patted slowly, lifelessly back to her bedroom. The door opened and she felt it at once as she stepped inside and closed it behind her. The air felt heavy and musky around her, almost difficult to walk through but she made her way through it, crawling onto the bed and not bothering to discard her robe. She lay on her side as she had done when she’d woken up, staring across the bed as she carefully pulled the sheets up around her. It was cold in bed too, a feeling she wasn’t used to so early in the morning. It had been cold when she woke, she remembered.

Her eyes closed as she tried to will herself back to where she had been a few hours ago. She’d opened her eyes in the middle of the night when it was still dark outside to see Ross’ sleeping form next to her. He’d been lying on his back, his head tilted to the side, his lips slightly parted and his soft, dark curls tossed across his face as he slept. She’d reached out, her face breaking into a smile as she slowly and carefully pushed his hair back, making him shift a little and groan. She’d been worried she’d woken him but after a few flutters of his eyelids, he’d fallen back asleep again.

She reached out in the same way, her eyes still closed and the hint of a smile playing on her lips as her hand found the empty pillow next to her. The tips of her fingers grazed softly over the pillowcase as if she was reading Braille, feeling the soft dip where his head had been moments ago. She ran her fingers over it delicately, as if any pressure would disturb the imprint, and her hand moved down lower onto the mattress, over the sheets where a similar dip was moulded into the bed. Her hand brushed against something soft and she opened her eyes to look down, finding Ross’ neck cloth tossed on the bed carelessly. She picked it up, examining the creased fabric and wondering how he’d forgotten to take it with him when he’d left. She hadn’t remembered seeing him wind it around his neck and tie it meticulously like he had done many times before in front of her. Her mind went blank for a moment as she weaved the delicate material in between her fingers, inspecting the creases where it had folded together to fit around his neck. How it usually sat so snugly against the nape of his neck, around the side and tied up in a tight, firm bow close to his Adam’s apple and tucked down into his jacket. She felt it ghost over her fingers and remembered how she had taken the place of the cloth the night before, with her fingers traversing the expanse of his neck, her nails cutting into the nape and scraping down the side, her lips wandering over the warm skin peppered roughly with stubble. She could still taste the warmth against her tongue, the flesh under her hands, the way his dark curls gave way to the back of his neck and down lower over the straining, defined muscles of his back.

The neck cloth felt light and soft in her hand and she played with it absently as she stared across the room, past the pillow Ross had rested his head on. It still smelled like him a little. No, she was wrong, it smelled like both of them. The bed felt worn and used under her, it had been forever since a man had lain with her for something as simple as going to sleep. Francis seemed like an age ago. He’d be irate if he knew about this, she thought. He had hated her enough during the early days of their marriage for her continued attachment to Ross and even before he’d died, during the trial, he still never hesitated to bring up her relationship with Ross. But it wasn’t angry anymore, there were no shouts of damn Ross, no wild hand gestures. Just sadness behind his beautiful eyes as he walked out of Trenwith to make the journey to Bodmin.

Those moments flitted behind her eyelids in an unending loop, how Francis had been so kind and gentle with her in those precious few days before he’d let the darkness consume him. Then it was a different Francis, one who would grab at her body under her nightgown, tear it off her with an impatience that would frighten her sometimes. She would refuse him when she found his behaviour repulsive. When she’d given birth to Geoffrey Charles, a birth she’d found taxing and shocking in its pain, and Francis had attempted to resume marital relations with her despite even Aunt Agatha’s discouragement. He had minded that deeply, she remembered, how offended he’d looked when she’d pushed him away, how hard it had been for her to regain her breathing after the fear that had seized her lungs when Francis cornered her in her own bed so aggressively. The same sort of fear that had seized her the night before when Ross had burst in unannounced. She hadn’t been afraid when she’d seen him at her door, she’d known that he was angry and she had been too. She had met him blow for blow verbally, tolerated his taunts about her decision to marry Francis, tried to explain to him that her decision to marry George wasn’t similar, it was about Geoffrey Charles. It was about her son. She hadn’t made this choice lightly and it wasn’t as if she’d had much choice. She’d tried to explain that to him too, that George had been good to them since Francis had died, bought gifts for Geoffrey Charles even when she’d refused and now he offered them both protection, respect, standing and most of all, a fortune for her son.

Ross had scoffed in her face when she’d asked him whether he wanted her to be a widow for the rest of her life. The derision in his voice had caused burning anger to seethe through her when he’d told her that she could have her pick of thirty men, but not George. She felt like screaming in his face, losing all her self control and yelling at him about the height she had fallen from. Once she’d been the nightingale of society, the most beautiful and desirable girl, the envy of all her friends. Her mother would take her time to carefully arrange the curl that fell against her neck correctly so it barely brushed her neckline before she entered a ballroom. Men would ask her to dance and her mother would instruct her on which to refuse and which to accept.

And now she was in her late twenties with a young son, heir to a failing estate, a vegetating mother and senile great aunt to look after and tenants whose concerns and needs she knew nothing about. She had told Geoffrey Charles that she must smile less at home to preserve her looks and to be fair, there had been nothing much to smile about lately. Frowning creates unseemly lines on the brow, perhaps those had been her mother’s last ever words to her. Her looks were of no consequence now, they weren’t enough to attract a possible suitor, not when they would be faced with the idea of naming a son that wasn’t theirs as their heir. She knew she was young and capable of bearing more children, legitimate children who would take Geoffrey Charles’ place as heir of her future husband’s estate and her poor boy would be left with nothing but here, here was George, a dear friend to her since childhood, not only accepting Geoffrey Charles and vowing to care for him as if he were his own son, but willing to name him to his estate, to give him a life and respectability and decency. To save him from a lifetime of humiliation, to save her from a lifetime of loneliness. She closed her eyes as the silence pounded around her ears, the same old Trenwith, the same quietness, the same oppressive, empty halls and corridors that lay outside her bedroom door. George was offering to take her away from this loneliness, this emptiness, didn’t Ross understand that? Didn’t he understand how hard it was for her to be alone now? Aunt Agatha was hardly riveting company with her portents of impending doom, her mother dribbling upstairs and no one, no one to support her or talk to her or help her. And it wasn’t just practical help and advice she sought, it was companionship. The feeling that someone would be there for her, provide for her, care for her. It had been so long since she’d felt something like that.

She felt haunted here, by the ghosts of great Poldarks past. Perhaps Francis hadn’t been the greatest of all Poldarks but still, he haunted her here. She felt him with her everywhere she went; when she sat to eat breakfast, when she played with Geoffrey Charles, when she got ready for bed. It wasn’t his voice or his memories that bit at her, but his presence; the feeling that he was always there, just out of reach. Behind her or over her shoulder, next to her just out of the corner of her eye at the peripheries of her vision. But every time she turned, she saw no one and nothing. She hadn’t felt him with her last night when she’d argued with Ross. She’d felt him as usual when she’d been sitting at her vanity, methodically brushing her hair but as soon as she’d heard the dull thump of Ross’ boots against the door downstairs, Francis seemed to vanish from the vicinity like he’d been spirited away.

When Ross had spoken of him, her body had burned with pure rage and she’d turned away, unable to look at him. When he’d doubted that she’d ever loved Francis, when he’d called her declaration of love for George fake as he assumed it had been for Francis. They had known last night in this bedroom that she didn’t love George, they both knew it and she knew why she was saying it out loud; both to convince Ross and herself. Ross wasn’t fooled by such tactics but why, why did he have to go back there? A place they hadn’t been for years, that silly merry-go-round of why Elizabeth had married Francis, why she hadn’t waited for Ross instead. She knew the pain and humiliation and hurt he’d faced when he’d come back to see that she was engaged to him and in truth, she hadn’t thought that he would ever come back. In her heart, she felt he was alive but in her head and her mother’s head, and Francis’ head, they all thought he was dead. And she’d told him as much, she’d hissed it under her breath to him after her wedding. _I thought you were dead._

Yet it seemed to her that Ross didn’t really care if he was alive or dead when it came to Elizabeth. He would rather she join a convent than marry another man. Ross had gone on to marry Demelza after one night with her, after rumours overwhelmed them both and made Elizabeth blanch, what was she to feel about that? Was she not entitled to feel that Ross was hers and no one else’s as he’d felt about her? Or was that perfectly rational, for him to marry another woman yet continue to rage at her for marrying another man? And now history was repeating itself in the most wretched way. She didn’t want to think about Demelza, she didn’t want to think about where Ross was riding off to, how she’d probably been awake all night waiting for him to come home. Did she even know where he’d gone? Did she know he had been sleeping in her bed all night?

She squeezed her eyes shut painfully tight, her breath freezing in her lungs. She didn’t want to go there, not right now. She knew how it felt to wait for your husband to come home, to know that he was in some other woman’s bed. To face that woman at balls and parties. She had even spoken to Ross of it once when Demelza had come to collect Verity for a trip to the dressmaker’s. She’d stood behind a chair and spoke to him sarcastically of how Francis would entertain his mistress with money he should be spending on his tenants, not even on herself. And now she thought of how Ross had sometimes neglected Demelza to come to Trenwith after Francis had died, to advise Elizabeth and meet her so frequently. She felt her cheeks become wet as she remembered how she’d called Demelza over to thank her for her kindness and patience barely a day ago, only to be met with sarcasm and cursory smiles, thinly veiled accusations of stealing her husband and giving him back.

She’d been affronted at the suggestion and had fallen speechless, unsure of how to respond to her until George had come and broken the awkwardness. But now she couldn’t face Demelza ever again. She didn’t know how to explain herself if she was ever given the opportunity. All she knew was that Ross hadn’t given her a choice the night before. The letter crossed her mind again, wondering whether it was her fault, she had surely enticed Ross to come to Trenwith. But that hadn’t been her purpose, she’d sent the letter in the best of faith, to inform him before he found out from someone else. She knew she was betraying his trust by considering a relationship with his greatest enemy and she knew Ross would be furious with both of them so she’d wanted to explain the rationale behind her decision. Ross had always been one of the only people she could speak to openly and her stomach had turned when she’d written in an unsteady hand about how lonely she felt here at Trenwith, how it was hard for her to address all the issues she knew nothing about. For so long she’d tried her hardest to manage the estate herself for the sake of her son but it was too much now, she couldn’t do it anymore. She felt overwhelmed, the mere sight of letters in the morning made her chest fill with dread. She’d tried to explain that to Ross as best she could and she was aware that he would be angry and want to talk more but never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that Ross would behave in such a way. They’d gotten caught up in their anger and their argument, she’d parried his every blow with a defence that had incensed him even further until he had cornered her, grasped her and held her arms behind her back. She’d tried, she’d tried so hard to push him away but there was no struggle to be had when he’d incapacitated her in such a way. _You would not dare_ , she’d told him, in a voice that she didn’t really feel belonged to her. _I would, Elizabeth. I will and so will you._

He hadn’t given her a choice, he hadn’t particularly cared whether she agreed or disagreed with his actions. His eyes were dark, his pupils enlarged as she’d never seen them before as he crawled over her, pinning her down. It was the third time she’d felt his mouth on hers since he’d left for America. But it wasn’t tender like their parting kiss, it was rough and harsh and open mouthed. In her anger, she’d responded back, matching him every way she could, pulling at his hair, shifting on the bed to allow his hand under her gown. He’d clawed at her like a man possessed, his panting mingling with hers as his lips ran against her neck, exposed as she’d tossed her head back. She’d frozen then feeling his hands pull her gown up and all she could hear was her own manic panting. His lips moved from her neck down between her breasts and she’d felt the heat begin to pool in her stomach, flooding all over her with a welcome warmth. She remembered then, his hands on every part of her body, rough and callused yet still strangely gentle. He’d spoken to her, warm, quiet words in her ear, something she couldn’t remember. It had felt good, Ross’ hands on her after all that time, his body on hers, pressing her down into the bed. It had felt good and warm and pleasurable. He’d collapsed with exhaustion next to her but wasn’t sated that easily. He’d wanted her again and again until she was barely able to move and even then, his hands ran over her, squeezing and holding and possessing hungrily. She had waited years and years to feel this with Ross yet somehow, it was incomplete. Her mouth felt dry as she tried to swallow and wondered why the moment of quiet when he’d been sleeping was more precious than the moments of having him inside her, being a part of her.

She didn’t doubt that Ross would ride back to Nampara and that he and Demelza would have some sort of talk or confrontation. Perhaps she would shout at him and throw things, break things, hit him and storm out of the house. The very thought of it made Elizabeth restless and she turned over, away from the pillow Ross had been sleeping on. The sharp winter sunlight hurt her eyes and reminded her that it was morning now, perhaps she should get up, see to her mother, to the servants, to breakfast and to Geoffrey Charles, who would no doubt need help with his buttons. Her body felt heavy, though, as if it was sinking into the bed. The room felt emptier than usual and the air had cleared, leaving no trace of what had happened the night before. The candles had burned out, there was no Ross next to her or at the foot of the bed.

She lifted her eyes to the door and they began to burn as she remembered opening it to find Ross standing there in an almost fevered state. Thanking her for the letter sarcastically, barging intrusively into her bedroom when she’d said she would go and find a candle so they could speak in peace downstairs. She wondered for a moment whether going downstairs would have changed anything. Ross had looked around her bedroom as if he was expecting to find something here, appraising it as if it were a set of furnishings he was considering purchasing. She’d tried to defend herself and her choice to him but of course, Ross was having none of it. She’d been reminded of the arguments they used to have when they were teenagers, particularly the blazing one they’d had before he’d gone to war. It had been similar to this, Ross snorting at her, Elizabeth trying to justify her reasons for stopping him. He had suggested she didn’t understand why he was leaving, the pressures on him and how he felt that in some way, it was his calling. It’s a man’s world, he’d told her. He’d inferred that she could never put herself in his shoes simply because she wasn’t a man, she didn’t understand what it was to go to war. Then she wondered for a moment, why she couldn’t say that to Ross now. He didn’t understand what it was to be a woman, to have no weapons but your looks, your social standing and have to use them to the best of your ability. He didn’t understand the pressures on her to do what was best for her son.

And then she felt like screaming, both at herself and at him. She felt like leaving the bed and taking a horse to Nampara, bursting in and screaming in his face that it didn’t _matter_ what he thought of her decision to marry George because she didn’t _belong_ to him anymore. She never had, and a flimsy ring from their adolescence meant nothing now that they were both married with children. She knew in her heart of hearts that she would always love Ross, love him deeply and truly not simply because they had formed an attachment all that time ago, but because of the things that had made her fall in love with him in the first place. Throughout the ravages of time and sufferings and troubles, those traits had still remained the same. His generous nature, his quick temper, his desire to do the right thing and his stupid, stupid pride and stubbornness. All the things that had made her fall in love with him were things that would infuriate her and irritate her and tear at her but never make her fall out of love.

She wondered whether she was the same. He’d told her that she’d changed and that he remembered a time where she was already perfect to him. She thought about whether she had changed beyond recognition, whether those things that had made Ross fall for her were still there, still visible. She felt that she had mutated into a grotesque caricature of herself, at wit’s end with no one to help her, transformed into a lifeless, empty vessel after Francis’ death, like a horse with blinders that sees nothing but the end of the racecourse. She didn’t feel like the old Elizabeth, the young Elizabeth who would chase Ross over cliffs, spend hours eating crisp apples with his head in her lap in the orchard. The Elizabeth who would purposely misplace her mother’s jewellery and have her search for it just to sneak out to spend time with Ross. She could still see his face, breaking out into a wide smile as she looked down at her lap, her eyes closed as she willed the memory to remain for as long as possible. His dark curls spread out on her white dress, his smile warming her like sunshine, making his eyes sparkle as he lifted the apple to his mouth and took a large bite. She could almost hear the noisy crunching, the sweet smell.

She opened her eyes to the empty bedroom and already knew Ross was gone. It was time to stop dwelling on the past she revisited so often and think of the future she dreaded to approach. Her breathing regulated itself as her head sunk even further onto the pillow. Her hair tickled her face as she stared out at the window again, letting the shards of light cut into her eyes. Ross had told her he must think, that he would let her know soon. She let her mind wander, to drift upwards and out, like she did sometimes when she had sat with Ross in the orchard. They would sit with each other in complete silence, sometimes doing mundane things like reading, sometimes after heavy and difficult conversations. They would sit and she would unlock her mind, let it leave her head and drift upwards where it would mingle with Ross’. She could almost feel their thoughts intertwining, clinging to each other easily like wisps of air. She tried it again, something she hadn’t done for years. She’d always thought of it as unlocking her mind, but the lock seemed rusty as she tried to turn it, making her head hurt. It drifted up and up and out above her somewhere but there was nothing else there. Ross wasn’t there. She couldn’t feel him, feel his thoughts slipping around hers, she couldn’t read his mind. Her was far away now, both physically and mentally. He had drifted away from her and she knew, even after the warmth and tenderness of the night before, Ross wouldn’t come back to her. The Ross she knew valued family and love and trust and coming to her would mean he would lose all of them. He’d lose Demelza and Jeremy and all they’d shared as a family and she knew Demelza was that to Ross which she could never be. Perhaps all those years ago, she could have been. She could have picked herself up and worked as hard as she could to make Ross proud, to be his wife and give him everything he needed. But now she was frail beyond her imagining. She couldn’t prop herself up, let alone Ross. She didn’t have that strength in her anymore, the strength Demelza espoused, the fierce brightness with which she displayed her loyalty to Ross like a proud peacock, strutting this way and that in the knowledge that she had Ross’ love and tenderness. Elizabeth longed to feel that way but knew she was so far removed from who she had been. Time and circumstances had given her a suffering so great she couldn’t carry it. Perhaps it was her fault, she was too weak, too helpless, too in need of a man to do things for her, too unable to cope with anything after the devastation she had faced. She would be no good to Ross in this state. She could give him nothing and he could give her nothing.

She would never ask anything from him anyway, she knew that much. She would never ask him to leave his wife, she would never ask him to give her son a fortune because they both knew it was impossible. She would never ask anything of Ross but love, love, love, love and more love. Enough love to fill her heart full to bursting, enough love that it gushed out of her like a bright heat, enough love to fill up her whole body and make her sparkle enough to rival the stars. Enough love to remind her of who she was, to melt away the outside and make her warm again, make her _Ross’_ again. She wanted something to call her own, something for herself. She didn’t want all of his heart, no, she knew she could never have that. Just a piece, just a small corner. All she wanted was love, Ross’ love and she would debase herself to any level for it. She knew it was shameful and disgraceful to think such things but she didn’t care anymore. She wanted Ross. She wanted Ross to want her and she would take him in any way he would give himself to her. She would give herself to him in any way he wanted just to feel those few moments of peace, just to brush his hair away from his face when he was asleep, to know that he was there next to her yet she knew that it wouldn’t happen. Her body began to ache, a dull pain making its way from her chest out to her head, her stomach, everywhere. He couldn’t give her that love. He was too full of love himself, for someone else. He would pour his love on her until she was full and she would revel in it, bask in it. And the love pouring out of Elizabeth would flow and flow and flow with nowhere to go, like a well that no one drank from.

She turned her eyes towards the window again. It was as if she were a star and Ross was a bird. They both traversed their own skies at will but could never meet. Maybe she was destined to stay here, twinkling beautifully yet stuck in the dark while Ross soared up and down and circled the fierce red sun that shone back at him. She stared out at the window lifelessly, her fingers moving over the soft fabric of the neck cloth in her hand. She wound it around her wrist and tied it. Ross had said he would let her know soon. ‘Soon’ couldn’t come soon enough.


End file.
